Integrations supported or to be supported by Bahmni

Software Bahmni
1

I want to start this thread to gather views from the wider OpenMRS community on what integration points should be present in Bahmni. Irrespective of how, who and where those actually get implemented (i.e. in OpenMRS), what we should build / support in the product to fulfil its goal of HMIS solution for Low Resource Setting.

Some of my initial thoughts are, Bahmni should integrate with following types of systems:

  • Systems which are commonly used in Global South and public sector setup e.g. DHIS2
  • Systems that complement Bahmni in covering the complete Healthcare delivery facilities of a client or a government e.g. CHW apps (OpenSRP, CommCare, any ODK form based system etc.)
  • Systems that are part of the health facility for providing better care e.g. Diagnostics, Lab analysers, PACS, ECG etc. (which ones is a big question)
  • Systems that form part of the broader healthcare eco-system like OpenHIE, OpenLMIS etc.

Please share your thoughts and views. Feel free to state any particular system that you prefer, any approach, any generic mechanisms, any other Open Source tool which already exists that can be integrated and so on…

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Not all the integrations below are not specifically between Bahmni and X but between OpenMRS and X. But Bahmni would:

  • make improvements to existing modules or write new modules
  • package it together where it sees fit and make sure that it just works out of the box I am calling this Bahmni native below.

Answering below from the perspective of Bahmni Customer (who cares less about what is inside the box)

  1. "Systems which are commonly used in Global South and public sector setup e.g. DHIS2" I don’t think there is any other broadly and unanimously accepted tool like DHIS 2 and OpenMRS. Integrating both is a must for that reason.

  2. "Systems that complement Bahmni in covering the complete Healthcare delivery facilities of a client or a government e.g. CHW apps (OpenSRP, CommCare, any ODK form based system etc.)" There has been some effort in the past around these in OpenMRS. I am less sure about making these Bahmni native yet. Hence the approach here may be more tactical, focussing on per project requirements if they appear on the scene and do it in a very minimal and basic way.

  3. "Systems that are part of the health facility for providing better care e.g. Diagnostics, Lab analysers, PACS, ECG etc. (which ones is a big question)" PACS/DICOM should be Bahmni native and well supported because there is already a standard. Lab Analysers - we need to learn more but as I can tell OpenELIS Global that we are using supports some (seemingly) standard lab analysers.

  4. "Systems that form part of the broader healthcare eco-system like OpenHIE, OpenLMIS etc." It is same as 2.

It is hard to make something is generic without there being widely accepted standard on the other side and well understood workflows. Both of this is true for 1 and 3 and not so much for 2 and 4.

Hope this is clear.

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